William Shepherd walked down the cobblestone streets in Greenwich village on the afternoon of Saturday, March 25th, 1911. It was a trendy place that any young reporter for the united press should be on a weekend. With an inclusive crowd, political activism, and a future home to Jackson Pollock it was, and still is, much like the Buckhead area of Atlanta, Lakewood in Cleveland, or the south end of Charlotte today. Counterculture, a diverse population, and an amazing night life lived in these stre…

 

 

William paused and shrugged when he heard the strange sound.

On Washington square in late Spring afternoon, it was such a strange sound to hear this loud thud with a sort of splat at the end.

Curious, William stopped after the third time he heard the sound. Looking up from the corner of Washington Square and Washington Place, he noticed a puff of smoke coming from the factory known as the Asch building.

 

 

“The first ten thuds shocked me. I looked up and saw that there were scores of girls at the windows. The flames from the floor below were beating in their faces.”

 

As William stood in shock, nearly fifty three women and girls jumped the 120 to 135 feet out of windows to escape the flames within the Asch building. Over a thousand people flocked from the nearby park and streets to try and help those escaping the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory while it was on fire. Out of nearly five hundred people in those three floors, one hundred forty-six would not live to see the next day. Over sixty of those souls chose to try jumping to escape, rather than die in flames.

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